Jerry Howarth, radio voice of the Toronto Blue Jays, reached out to Windsor’s Joe Siddall, offering his sympathies over the death last month of Siddall’s 14-year-old son Kevin, who lost his battle with blood cancer.

“It was one week after he died, which was (Kevin’s) birthday, Feb. 11,” Siddall recalled.

Howarth saw a mention of Siddall’s loss in Toronto baseball writer Bob Elliott’s column and sought out his e-mail to pass along the message.

“To this day, he thinks it’s kind of ironic that he saw that in the paper,” Siddall said.

“I replied to him right away and told him, ‘Thanks very much. I look forward to seeing you when you come to Detroit this season.’ After that, I put in jest, ‘Or maybe in the broadcast booth one day.’

Jack Morris had left the Blue Jays radio broadcasts in January and the team was in the market for a new analyst.

Howarth put forth Siddall’s name to Kelly Kirch, the program director for Sportsnet 590 Toronto, the Blue Jays’ flagship station.

Just as he did for several years as a big-league catcher, Siddall flew to Florida last Tuesday to begin fighting for a job in spring training.

Saturday, the team announced that he’d succeeded and would be joining Howarth in the booth for all 162 games this season.

“It’s a crazy world we live in,” Siddall said.

At a time when his family has suffered their greatest loss, fate has offered this sensational opportunity.

“It’s been a great distraction,” Siddall admitted. “I’m probably still in a fog to be honest with you, as anyone could imagine. I don’t know if the timing of this is wonderful, or if it’s awful. I’m hoping it turns out to be wonderful.

“I think everything happens for a reason. Maybe Kevin is sending me a message here to go chase another dream.”

The Siddalls’ world was knocked off kilter last fall with Kevin was first diagnosed with his illness. Life as they knew it would never be the same.

Yet the entire family – Joe, his wife Tamara, son Brett and daughters Brooke and Mackenzie – have been very public in expressing their love for their son and brother, taking to social media to post photos of Kevin and messages that he left, determined to overcome their loss by celebrating the life that Kevin lived.

“We certainly are going to remember Kevin and we do try to cherish the good memories.”

Joe’s twitter account (@siddalljoe) includes a quote from Dr. Seuss – “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

It also highlights a message that Kevin posted to Twitter on Dec. 23. “Your life could drastically change in a matter of seconds. Appreciate each moment, and live life to its fullest.”

“I know my wife and I are trying to keep that in how we’re dealing with it,” Siddall said of the positive outlook. “We don’t want to be sitting around and crying 24/7. We know that’s not going to help our kids.

“We thought if we could continue to trudge forward slowly, if we can portray that to our other kids, then hopefully, they will do the same and we can get through this together.”

He’s hopeful that it’s working. Brett has resumed his studies and play as a first baseman/outfielder at Buffalo’s Canisius College. Brooke just finished her fourth season as a goalie with the Guelph Gryphons and will graduate in the spring. Mackenzie is a senior at Holy Names, headed off to university next fall.

“Our kids have been wonderful that way,” Siddall said. “We spent a lot of nice time with Kevin, which helped us all in terms of closure. It wasn’t a very long illness, but at the same time, it was long for all of us. We had lots of time with him.

“It’s never easy, whether it’s a long time or a short time. It’s a 14-year-old young man who didn’t make it to his 15th birthday. It’s very sad in every sense of the word.”

Siddall doesn’t profess to comprehend why his family was left to deal with this tragedy, nor does he seek to decipher what life lesson it’s supposed to be teaching to them.

“I do believe that things happen for a reason,” Siddall said. “I’m not saying we have to understand why all the time, but the circumstances of how this happened are really, really strange.

“Losing your son is surreal and it’s the worst thing that can ever happen to somebody, but maybe something good is going to come out of this.”

Before Kevin became sick, the game plan was laid out. Joe, who’d been a stay-at-home dad since he retired from baseball in 2000, working part-time as a batting practice pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, would continue to coach Kevin’s summer team, the Windsor Stars, and would also be coaching the Holy Names baseball team in the spring as Kevin began his high school career.

Before the call from the Blue Jays, he was uncertain as to what his plans would be going forward.

“I was already contemplating what I was going to do,” Siddall admitted. “I’ve coached baseball for a long time and been very involved in the community.

Siddall’s voice cracks and the tears begin to flow as the realization that he’ll never coach his son again once more wells to the surface.

“The first question I was going to have to ask myself was coaching the high school team,” he said. “It was going to be extremely difficult for me and I hadn’t made a decision on what I was going to do there.

“I had to decide on whether I was going to coach the summer league team (with the Windsor Stars) and again, I didn’t know what was going to be the right thing. I think I probably would have, but I probably would have eased into it.

“I don’t know what would have been better or worse, but I know it wasn’t going to be pretty, because Kevin was a baseball player and it was something I looked forward to every summer, as you could imagine.”

There are similar emotions competing inside of him as Siddall goes to the ballpark with the Jays in Florida each day.

On the one hand, he is back in his element, doing what he loves. On the other hand, each time he arrives at the diamond, he recognizes that he’ll no longer get to share that passion with Kevin.

“I don’t know if it’s good or bad going to the ballpark,” Siddall acknowledged. “You want to resume normalcy and what you do.

“I know this last week has been much better for me in terms of dealing with Kevin’s loss. It’s been such a distraction since I got on that plane Tuesday. My brain’s been going a million miles an hour. There’s so much work to do and people to meet.

“I’ve got to get to know this team. I’m really trying to talk to players, get a feel for who’s who and what types of years they had. I’m doing a lot of homework on a team that I’m not overly familiar with.”

Down the road someday, Siddall’s plan was to try something like this, to get back into baseball, either as a broadcaster or a coach.

Fate and tragedy conspired to make that day today.

“The circumstances have changed that,” he said.

Siddall wonders about those circumstances. What if Howarth hadn’t read Elliott’s column? What if he hadn’t made that aside about broadcasting in his response?

“My wife will certainly spend lots of time in Toronto,” Siddall said. “My kids are quite excited about this, about coming to Toronto to see me and seeing me on the road in big league cities.”

It’s a blessing for the whole family to get some good news, to have something different to think about and to realize that positive developments will still occur for them as life goes on.

“So proud of my daddy,” Mackenzie tweeted Sunday.

It’s also why Joe is convinced that Kevin’s spirit played a role in making all of this come together so quickly, so perfectly.

“We always said there’s going to be a lot of good,” Siddall said. “We’re saddened by losing Kevin, but I think there’s going to be a lot of good come to a lot of people, because he touched so many lives.”

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